


Prodigal

by Baylor



Category: Dark Angel, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family, Friendship, Gen, Genetics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:59:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Max first meets him, she dismisses him as a flunkie, but he may be more than he seems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prodigal

**Author's Note:**

> An AU of both series and not time-specific for either.
> 
> Podfic available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941256).

The first time Max met him was in the Manticore basement. She told him she was doing recon; he said that he was snooping around. She figured him for a Manticore flunkie and kicked his ass, then left him there.

He was back again a week later, trying, the same as her, to get access to the mainframe. She kicked his ass again, and while he could handle himself, and probably would thrash any regular human, he was no transgenic, so maybe Max had figured him wrong for a Manticore flunkie. 

She helped him off the floor and allowed as how they might be able to help each other. He grinned and winked at her and offered to scratch her back if she would scratch his – 

She knocked him back on his ass before he could finish and she let him pick himself up off the floor. Then she let him help her break into the mainframe room and they downloaded everything they could get their hands on. 

He said his name was Ted Nugent but Max also figured him for a great big liar, so she started thinking of him as Alec in her head, for smart-alec. 

Joshua diverted them before they could leave via the basement air duct – X7s, he said, sniffing around the exit. He pulled apart a sewer cover for them. 

“Strong dog-man,” Alec commented in the tunnel, and that was all he had to say about Joshua. 

***

She blew up Manticore, of course. She’d been headed there for a long time. 

She let the transgenics out first, obviously, she’s no mass murderer, but then she gathered up a scraggly little group of survivors and every damn one of them was a kid, and she started to think that maybe just throwing them out into a world they knew nothing about wasn’t such a great idea.

The kids had been casing a quickie-mart and no-tell (actually called the No-Tell Motel) and had clumsily scored some popcorn and candy, but they were pretty much starving, so Max hauled herself over to skanky central to buy the kids some food. 

Who should stroll in but Alec? 

“Of course,” Max said when she rounded the aisle and he was standing there.

“Hey, I’m a paying customer, unlike your little friends who were in here earlier,” Alec said, grabbing a couple of sodas and a box of Pop Tarts. 

“You saw that?” Max asked, and Alec snorted.

“Everyone at the joint saw that. Guess they hadn’t reached Shoplifting 101 before you blew up their school,” he said.

Max shifted uneasily. “It was a prison,” she said.

“Yeah, a prison that fed and housed them,” Alec said flatly. He slapped his food on the counter and then slapped a bill down.

Max didn’t answer. Alec grabbed his change from the clerk and walked out.

Outside, Alec was walking across the stretch of mud that constituted a drive toward the row of sleazy rooms for rent. 

“Hey,” Max called after him, and he paused and turned around. “You don’t know what it was like in there, growing up.”

Alec nodded, conceding her point. “I know what it’s like out here, growing up,” he said. 

Max nodded back, conceding his point. 

“See ya,” Alec said, and let himself into a room.

“Bye,” Max said feebly as the door shut behind him.

***

Okay, so she’d gotten herself captured by what little remained of Manticore’s goon squad and now she was in a cage beside some lizard guy with the ironic name of Mole. Maybe her game wasn’t all it should be. Still, at least she was doing something. 

“Oh, this is nice,” someone said, and of course it was Alec, because she’d been wrong, he was a transgenic after all, designed and programmed to ruin Max’s life, at every opportunity, with maximum smugness. There was no way that wasn’t produced in a lab.

“Shut up,” Max said. 

Alec grinned at her, then nodded to Mole. “Hey, man,” he said, and let Mole out of his cage. 

“Later, Max,” he said to her and started to walk away. Mole rolled his eyes and cleared his throat. 

“What’s that?” Alec said, and cupped a hand to his ear. “Oh, right, Max needs my help. I can hear her asking nicely right now.”

Max looked at Mole, who shrugged. “He’s got the lock-pick, I’d ask nicely,” Mole advised. Max ground her teeth.

“Please, can you let me out?” she said. Alec sighed and looked disappointed.

“I think you can ask nicer than that, but we’re kinda pressed for time here,” he said, and deftly freed her in seconds. “I’ll let you show me how nice you can ask some other time,” he whispered in her ear as she pushed out of the cage.

Max’s arm shot out to smash right into his perfect nose and his filthy mouth, but Mole said sharply, “We gotta go, now,” and she pulled the punch. 

She’d get another chance to show Alec just how nicely she could ask.

***

It wasn’t fun when it rolled around, though, especially because Alec tried to kill both her and Joshua. 

Trying to stop his head from exploding or not, Max didn’t care for almost being murdered. She took it kinda personally. 

So it was totally beyond her why she ponied up Logan’s cure money to have the explosive hacked out of the base of Alec’s skull. 

“Thank you,” Alec said, still sweating and trembling, once the mad scientist had fled, and Max slammed him up against the wall without pulling her punch one little bit.

“That money was supposed to get my friend out of his wheelchair,” she said, and she was shaking as hard as Alec. “Do you think I’m going to get another chance like this? You want to thank me? Get out of my life. Stop crawling around what little is left of Manticore and getting yourself into trouble and just get the hell out of my life.”

“I’m sorry, Max,” Alec whispered, and his eyes were all green sincerity, and she believed him, but she was so furious and frustrated and years beyond the end of her rope that she was afraid she was going to kill him. 

She backed away from the wall and let him out. Alec glanced over at Joshua and said, “Sorry, man.”

“That’s okay,” Joshua said, because, hey, he only tried to kill you, Joshua, so no biggie, and then Alec was out the door and gone and at that moment, Max never wanted to lay eyes on him again.

***

“You know, you’re like, like, you’re back no matter what, and you’re just freaking like,” Max sputtered weeks later when she went to steal Sammy Sosa’s baseball and there he was, like this thing you thought you’d gotten rid of for good and you turned around and it was back and – 

“Herpes,” Alec said. “It’s like herpes. You think it’s gone and then – wham! there it is again and it itches so bad it just drives you crazy and you know you shouldn’t scratch but you want to so bad, you know it will feel so good if you do and –“

Max pushed him and they swayed on their cables. “You’re disgusting,” she said. “And I bet you know from first-hand experience.” 

“I am 100 percent disease-free,” Alec said, jostling her back. “But I hear things. You look like something in your pants is making you itch, Maxie.”

Things went downhill from there, until they lost the ball and set off the alarm and ended up racing from the crime scene. When they reached her bike, Max said, “What were you doing there, anyway?”

“Uh, stealing a very valuable piece of American history?” Alec said and Max grimaced at him.

“No, I mean, what were you going to –“ and then she stopped, because she didn’t want to know, she didn’t want to get drawn into this guy’s life, she was going to say good night and hope to never run into him again.

Alec cleared his throat awkwardly. “Pay you back,” he said. “For, you know.”

“Saving your life?” Max said dryly. 

“Yeah, that,” Alec said. 

Max shrugged. “I already owed you one,” she said. 

“Yeah, but yours was free,” Alec said. “I thought, maybe if you had the cash, you could find another way to help your friend.”

Her eyes burned, so she focused on snapping on her driving gloves. “Don’t worry about it,” she said tightly. “It might not have even worked,” because that was what Logan had said after Asha had opened her big blonde mouth and told him what had happened. Max silently vowed again to never share anything with that one.

Alec coughed. “Okay,” he said, then added, “Hey, can I grab a ride?”

Max nodded and swung onto the bike. Alec hopped on behind her.

“Here’s a thought,” she said as she started it up. “Why don’t you get a job, try being a respectable citizen for a change?”

“That is a thought,” Alec said, and chuckled deep in his chest and it rumbled against Max’s back. 

She dropped him at the checkpoint because he didn’t have a sector pass. God – or whatever – bless Jam Pony and its complete inability to keep track of its employees.

***

God – or whatever – damn Jam Pony and its complete inability to do background checks on its employees. And while God – or whatever – was at it, damn Normal and his before unknown and horrific love of underground cage fighting.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Max hissed at Alec while Normal raved about the godlike wonder that was Zeppelin Overdrive, cage-fighter supreme. 

“Getting a job, being a respectable citizen for a change,” Alec said. 

Getting a sector pass, Max realized moments later when Normal slapped one down. 

“I guess I can’t put Zeppelin Overdrive on here,” Normal said, and Alec laughed. 

“Dean Harrison,” he said, and Max actually said, “Oh!” in surprise, because somehow, she’d completely forgotten that Alec wasn’t really this guy’s name, and in fact, she’d never even called him that except in her head. Both Normal and Alec – Dean – gave her a funny look, and then Normal barked, “Hey, missy, get to work and stop gawking!”

Max stormed over to her locker and slammed it open and crammed her bag inside. Original Cindy was watching Normal fawn over Alec – damn it, Dean – with nauseating idolatry. 

“That your boy?” OC said, and Max slammed her locker shut so hard the floor vibrated. 

“He’s not my boy,” she retorted. 

“Because you failed to mention that he is one fine specimen of the human male,” OC said. 

“You don’t like men,” Max reminded her pointedly. 

“That right there is a good reason to rethink my current membership,” OC answered, and seriously, if work turned into an Alec – for the love all that is holy, DEAN – love-fest, someone was going to pay, and it was gonna hurt. 

***

In his first three weeks at work, Dean got Sketchy beat up delivering drugs and slept with two workmates who proceeded to take it out on each other.

And really, Max was only pointing out the obvious, that Dean was who they should be mad at, not each other, and there was no reason to say those things to her, because words hurt, you know.

At any rate, Normal was nuts if he thought Max was delivering that forgotten package for Dean. He could damn well do it himself, even if it was more out of the way to go to the address Normal had for him than just to deliver the stupid package.

Max had to pick her way over a wino and a pile of broken glass up the stairs. She pounded on the door and when Dean hadn’t answered 4.94 seconds later, she pounded again and hollered, “Dean, get out here because Normal is nuts if he thinks I’m doing your work for you!”

A skinny boy with floppy hair opened the door and Max stepped back, confused, but the kid said, “He’s not here. You wanna leave it?” and pointed at the package held out in her hand.

“Uh,” Max said. She pressed the package to her chest as though it were valuable. “I better not. It’s a work delivery.”

“You wanna wait?” the kid asked. “He just went to pick up food.”

“Okay,” Max said slowly, and the kid let her into a lousy little room with peeling wallpaper, a sagging bed and a moldy couch, which the kid flopped down on. Max became convinced Dean really did live there when she saw the kid was watching a large HD TV that was still shiny with newness. 

“Where did you get that?” Max asked, and sat down next to him. 

The kid shrugged. “Dean brought it home,” he said, as though all things came magically from Dean without explanation. 

Max expected music videos or cartoons or an action movie, but the kid was watching a PBS documentary on Texas’ secession. They were learning about the siege of Governor Perry in the mansion when a foot started thumping on the door.

“Sammy!” Dean hollered from outside, and the kid – Sammy, apparently – scrambled up and opened the door for Dean, who came in laden with takeout bags. Sammy snagged a couple from him and set them down on the uneven Formica table. 

“That girl from your work is here,” Sammy said with a dismissive point at Max before eagerly pulling boxes of food out of the bags.

Dean looked at her in surprise and, she almost thought, embarrassment. “Max,” he said levelly. “Help you with something?”

She scooted out of the lumpy couch and held up the package. “You forgot to deliver this,” she said lamely, because, seriously? Dean was like, she didn’t know, raising this kid, and he’d just brought home dinner, and they were living in this really lousy little ghetto room, and she kind of wanted Alec back because now she felt uneasy about a lot of things she’d said to and thought about Dean, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“Oh,” Dean said, and crossed the room to take it from her. “Thanks, I’ll run it out tonight.”

Max pulled the package back against her chest. “No, I can do it,” she said, and Dean gave her an expectant look.

“You brought it over here,” he pointed out.

Max laughed nervously. “Well, yeah, I just, I –“ and she didn’t know what to say. Her eyes flitted away from Dean and landed on Sammy, who had piled food onto a plate and was digging in with enthusiasm, oblivious to anyone else in the room. 

“Max,” Dean said, and he was standing there with his hand out expectantly and a get-on-with-it look on his face. She grimaced and slapped the package into his hand.

“Bye, Max,” Dean said, then turned his back to her and started piling food onto a plate. 

“S’good,” Sammy said around a mouthful and Dean answered, “How can you tell? It’s not in your mouth long enough to taste it.”

“Bye,” Max said in a tiny voice, and let herself out. As she closed the door behind her, she heard Dean ask, “You do your homework?”

Whenever Max thought her life couldn’t get weirder, somehow it did.

***

Dean was at his locker the next day when she came in to work.

“Hey,” she said, avoiding eye contact and going to her own locker.

“Hey,” Dean replied neutrally. He shut his locker a minute later and then stood there motionless for a second before coming over to her locker. 

“Listen,” Dean said, so she looked at him. “It’s no big deal. It’s just my little brother.”

“Where’re your parents?” she asked quietly.

“Where’re your parents?” he answered, annoyed, and she raised her eyebrows at him. “Oh, right, duh,” Dean said. “Bad point. Um, Mom died when Sammy was a baby. Dad’s been gone a little while.”

“Where’d he go?” she asked in the same quiet voice.

“Nosy,” Dean complained, looking at the floor. Max waited. “Dunno,” Dean said. “Went out and didn’t come back.” He looked back up at her. “He didn’t leave us, though. He never – he always –“ 

He turned his face away and Max said quietly, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Dean echoed. He took a deep breath and steadied. “Anyway, me and Sammy now. I try to keep him away from all this,” and Dean waved his hand around Jam Pony, but Max knew he meant the drug dealing and the stealing and whatever the hell he’d been doing at Manticore. 

“Yeah,” Max said, then felt she needed to give something back, for barging into his home and maybe into his life in a way that maybe she didn’t have a right to. “Dean. It’s no big deal. It’s just your kid brother, right?”

Dean’s eyes searched her face and then he smiled, a real smile, for the first time since she’d known him. “Thanks, Max,” he said.

“Sure,” she answered. She sat on the bench to change shoes and he started to walk away. 

“Dean,” she called, stopping him. She looked up as she tied her shoes. “Be careful out there. That stuff, when we first met?” Dean jerked his chin. “You don’t want to go out and not come home to Sammy.” 

“Never,” he said.

 

***

During the next few weeks, Dean scammed Joshua into doing his Jam Pony work (okay, so Joshua loved it but Dean shouldn’t take advantage), then scammed Max into working at a girlie bar (okay, so they saved that Gill Girl, but, c’mon, she had to sit on his lap). Max was also pretty sure he slept with Asha, not that she cared.

He also brought Sammy with him to Crash and somehow batted his eyes until the bartender relented and poured Sammy a soda then told Dean he’d better not regret this. The bartender probably didn’t have regrets but Logan did when it turned out his pool table hustle of Dean was really Sammy and Dean’s pool table hustle of Logan.

“A fool and his money,” Logan said bemusedly as he wheeled around the table and forked over the bills to a half-delighted, half-nervous Sammy, and then bought the kid dinner. He made Dean buy his own food.

“You shouldn’t bring a kid into a place like this,” Max sniped at Dean, but Original Cindy gave her that knowing look.

“You and I both went to worse when we were his age, and didn’t walk out with a wad of cash,” she said, and then poured two swigs of beer into an empty glass for Sammy.

Max hmphed and sat by herself while Original Cindy corrupted and Sketchy fawned and Logan enjoyed himself and Dean watched his little brother have a good time with pleasure. Max glowered, but it was kind of a waste with no one watching. Stupid friends.

***

“Hey, girlie,” Normal hollered as soon as she walked in, “try to keep your rent-boys out of the joint, hm?” then jerked a thumb over at the bench by the office window. Sammy was sitting there, hunched into his jacket, backpack at his feet.

She didn’t quite move at true transgenic speed, but it was close, and Original Cindy caught her by the elbow to slow her.

“Sammy, hey,” she said, sitting down beside him and taking in his pinched expression. “What’s wrong?”

“Dean never came home last night,” he said, and anxiously turned his phone over and over in his hand. “He doesn’t pick up his phone. I don’t know where he went, and I didn’t know where else to go, and I don’t have anyone’s number.”

“When’d he leave?” OC asked, standing in front of Sammy.

“Um, like 9, maybe 10,” Sammy said. “Said he’d be back in a couple hours, had to go check on something.” The kid’s eyes were hollow, and Max wondered if he’d slept at all. “He wouldn’t do that, not without calling and telling me. And he always calls to check on me if he’s out late and – I didn’t know who else to tell.”

“It’s all right,” Max said, and put a hand on Sammy’s arm. “I’ll find him.”

It didn’t seem right to take Sammy back to that lousy rented room and leave him there all alone, and Logan thought that his place was being watched lately, so Max punted. Joshua and Sammy regarded each other with open curiosity, and then Joshua asked Sammy if he liked mac and cheese with little hot dogs in it and Sammy said it was his favorite, so Max figured they were all set. 

God – or whatever – bless Logan and his uber-hacking skills, because he found an alarm that had tripped the night before with no prowler discovered. Max was going to kick Dean’s ass for scaring Sammy over some stupid, easy b&e, but then she found the place and it was a freaking fortress of boobytraps that extended to its huge acreage. 

It was twilight by then, so Original Cindy and Sketchy came out to help her look, but she ended up the one who almost tripped over Dean in the dwindling light because he’d half-hidden himself in the shrubbery. 

“You’re such a jack-ass,” she said angrily when he finally opened his eyes, and Dean smiled and said hoarsely, “Always knew you cared, Maxie.” 

Max had a long response ready for that, but then Dean said, “I left Sammy home alone, you gotta call him, I lost my phone,” so she just said, “Sammy’s fine. Who do you think sent us out here looking for you, your fairy godmother?”

“Good,” Dean said, and his eyes slid back shut.

The three of them managed to carry him back to the road and load him into Logan’s car. The dome light revealed a bloody scalp, a massively bruised torso and a hugely swollen ankle. 

“He probably fell,” Logan said, and then started the car. “Harbor Lights ER?”

Max hesitated, and Sketchy looked at her in confusion. “He’s a mess, we gotta take him to a doctor,” he said.

“What if he’s wanted for something?” Original Cindy pointed out. “You know he’s always dealing drugs and stealing things. You gonna finish raising Sammy if he gets IDed at the ER?”

“Let’s just get him back to Joshua’s and get him cleaned up, see how bad it is,” Max said. Logan gave her a disapproving look in the rearview mirror, but put the car in gear and headed to Joshua’s. 

***

It wasn’t as bad as it looked. Of course, lying in the damp, cold bushes half the night and then all day hadn’t done Dean any favors, but they cleaned him up and got him into warm, dry clothes and piled blankets on top of him and when he came around, they forced hot tea down him.

“Thanks,” was all Dean feebly had to say, but he never looked at the tea held to his mouth because his eyes never left Sammy, hovering at the foot of the bed. 

Original Cindy wrapped the ankle and then elevated it, and they put a cool pack on it, then warm packs on his torso. Dean muttered, “Thanks,” again, but his eyes were shut and then he was out.

Sammy didn’t want to go to bed, so Max let him pull the musty armchair over to Dean’s bed and sit there, then chased everyone else out of the room. Ten minutes later, Joshua carried a soundly sleeping Sammy to a bed of his own and tucked him in. 

“Little puppies need sleep,” he said to Max, and petted Sammy’s hair before leaving the room. 

Logan had waited in the car, because Joshua’s flophouse wasn’t exactly handicapped-accessible, and he hated Joshua carrying him in. Max ran out to say goodbye and see if he could give OC and Sketchy a ride home. He was finishing a phone call as he rolled the window down.

“He’s doing better,” she said when he snapped the phone shut. “I’m going to stay, make sure he’s all right.”

“Good,” Logan said. “That house? The one Dean was breaking into?”

“Yeah?” Max said. It was starting to mist and she shoved her hands in her pockets and shivered.

“It belongs to Robert Berrisford, a genetic engineer. Not a scientist himself, but a smart investor in the sciences,” Logan said. “His closest ties were to a group called Latnok.”

“A subsidiary of Manticore,” Max said, and Logan nodded grimly.

“Look, Max,” Logan said, and she clenched her jaw. He held up a placating hand. “I like Dean too. But you don’t really know anything about him. You never even found out what he was doing at Manticore when you first met.”

Max wanted to pick a fight, to say Logan was just suspicious, Logan was just petty, Logan was just jealous (of what, she didn’t want to put her finger on), but it was cold and she was tired of fighting with Logan. 

“I doubt he’s on their side if he’s breaking in and stealing from them,” she said instead, and Logan nodded.

“But that doesn’t mean his agenda is your agenda,” he said. 

“Okay,” Max said, and stepped away from the car. “Take OC and Sketchy home?”

“Fine,” Logan said curtly, and rolled his window back up. 

***

Max went to sleep in the armchair in Dean’s room, and woke when she heard him shifting around. 

“All right?” she asked, and turned on the bedside light. Dean was panting and in a light sweat, but he rallied up a leer. 

“There’s something here about you finally sleeping with me, give me a minute,” he said weakly. She rolled her eyes and gave him some water instead, then moved pillows around until he was more comfortable. 

“Better?” she asked, sitting at the edge of the bed, and Dean caught hold of her hand.

“Max,” he said, but there was no leer to it, so she didn’t pull away. He closed his eyes and his ragged breath started to even out.

She thought he’d fallen back asleep and was about to extract her hand and stand up, but he must have felt her shift because his fingers tightened and he opened his eyes.

“It’s Sammy,” he said. “They’re after Sammy.”

“Who?” Max asked, then realized what he was saying. “Manticore.”

Dean nodded. “Why?” Max asked. “He’s not – he can’t possibly be one of us.” 

Dean swallowed. He was sweating again. “Sammy has these dreams,” he said, “and sometimes, they come true.”

“Come again?” Max said, because that couldn’t be right, but somehow, she knew that it was.

“When our mom died, this guy was in Sammy’s room,” Dean said. “Over his crib, and Mom got up, I don’t know, Sammy was crying or something, and she screamed and it woke us up and the house was on fire, and Dad came running out of the nursery and put Sammy in my arms, and he said to run outside, fast as I could, and not look back, and I did, I left them there, but he came out alone,” and Dean was crying and Max didn’t think he even knew.

“The cops said it was a home invasion, but Dad never believed it. What kind of burglar walks by the television and computer and stereo and goes into the baby’s room. Mom was already hurt, he told me later, and the guy was out cold and Sammy screaming in his crib and this smell in the air – Dad was a Marine, did two tours in Iraq, said the smell was chemical, and he knew the place was going up. I don’t know how he got out, but he never made it back in the room to Mom.”

Max folded both of her hands tight over Dean’s. “How do you know it was Manitcore?” she asked. 

Dean shrugged. “Dad put it together,” he said. “He knew something was wrong, after the fire, so he took off with us. I don’t think he knew back then. When Sammy was five or six, he started having these nightmares, and sometimes he told me about them, and then I’d find out later that the things he dreamed about, they’d happened to people we knew. I told Dad and – I don’t know, I think he already knew, or suspected, at least.”

“But he’s yours, right?” Max asked, then clarified, “I mean, he’s your parents’ kid?”

Dean nodded. “I remember Mom being pregnant. No bar code. And until the dreams started, he was totally normal. I don’t know, maybe they did something to him to cause the dreams. Or maybe they want him because of the dreams, want to poke around in his DNA. Dad knew more, but he kept his secrets. He told me about Manticore, though, told me he was coming to Seattle to check out this facility they had here.”

“And then he didn’t come home,” Max said quietly. “And then I blew the place up.”

Dean squeezed her fingers. Max didn’t know what else to say, so she wiped his damp face off and pulled the blankets up. 

“I don’t think he was there,” Dean said hoarsely. “At least, not by the time I made it to Seattle and found Manticore.”

“You should talk to Logan” she said. “He might be able to find something out for you. About your dad, or about Sammy.”

“Yeah,” Dean said thickly, looking exhausted in the dim light. “Dad wasn’t big on teaching us to trust people.”

Max rested her palm on the blankets, over Dean’s chest. “He had his reasons,” she said. 

Dean looked at her miserably until his eyes slid shut. Max shut off the light and went to the door, then paused.

“Dean,” she said, and he was still awake, said huskily, “Yeah.”

“I put Logan in that wheelchair,” she said into the darkness.

“I know,” Dean said. “But not on purpose.”

Max didn’t think it would console Dean if they found out that she’d burned his father alive but not on purpose. 

“Max,” Dean said, and she didn’t answer. “I stole your research on Sandeman. On purpose.”

“You’re such an ass, Dean,” shot out of her mouth without filter, and then she laughed. “All right. You didn’t give it to Joshua for an art project, did you?”

“It’s at the apartment,” Dean said. “There’s a place under the floorboards; Sammy’ll show you.”

“Fine,” Max said. “Go to sleep, Dean.”

“You know,” Dean started, and she shut the door on the rest.

 

 

***

Dean couldn’t work for a while as he healed up, and Joshua couldn’t get enough of feeding Sammy mac and cheese with little hot dogs, so they made a strange little family, or litter, or pack, or whatever. The house smelled like wet dog and grimy boys and books and paint and Max kind of loved it there, but only because she loved Joshua and Sammy. 

During the next few months, Dean scammed an art gallery into paying exorbitant prices for Joshua’s paintings (okay, so he split the money with Joshua, but, c’mon, Joshua’s art was free and natural expression and Dean just went and commercialized it), then got scammed into returning to the cage-fighting ring (okay, so it’s good money, but, you know – it’s cage fighting). 

Max isn’t going to mention the run-in with the penis monster, which totally was not her fault no matter what Dean said, and anyway, they agreed to pretend it never happened.

Max broke up with Logan for good and she didn’t want to talk about it. 

More people started to talk about transgenics as if they might actually be real and not some creepy urban legend like alien bounty hunters, and while by now they were an actual underground, organized and united, it was getting harder and harder to find and then hide their people. Max dreamed of her childhood, of Manticore, of training, of testing, and she woke up shaking and crawled into Original Cindy’s bed, and her friend held her until she could breathe again.

The jig was up once the networks started airing footage of sector guards being attacked by that desperate, terrified transgenic. Max stopped researching at all; she devoted all of her time to getting transgenics out of the city and to safehouses. Logan was liquidating and bankrupting himself to fund Max’s underground railroad, and while most days she couldn’t look him in the eyes, she needed his help.

Mole was gearing up for warfare, and Joshua left the brothers at his house and joined the resistance soldiers in Terminal City. Asha and her people had left, just gone overnight. And White wasn’t a concern anymore – now they were all dodging NSA agents.

Dean never missed a night’s work at her side. 

With Joshua gone, Sammy usually slept at the apartment with Original Cindy. He was teaching her to hustle poker. Dean would poke him awake and haul him off the couch when they finished up, and Max would drive them back to the house, Sammy wedged between her and his brother on the bike. 

So she was surprised when she left the apartment one morning and Sammy was sitting out at the curb waiting for her. 

“Hey,” she said. “Dean’ll kick your ass for cutting school.”

Sammy looked up at her, his face scrunched up with worry. “I had a dream about you,” he said, and she sat down beside him.

“It won’t happen like that,” she said when he’d finished. “You said people can change them, your dreams, right?” Sammy nodded, and she put an arm around his shoulders. “So, no way I’m letting it go down like that.”

“Okay.” Sammy looked up at her from under his floppy bangs. She gave him a squeeze and then stood up. When he stood up beside her, she realized with shock that he’d grown taller than her in the time she’d known him.

“Go to school,” Max said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye, Max,” he said, and walked away, a skinny kid in with a loaded-down backpack in a ruined city.

“Bye, Sammy,” she breathed, and wrapped her arms around herself against the sudden chill.

***

She never saw him again, or Dean. She couldn’t remember, later, what she and Dean had even talked about that last night, if she’d even said goodbye or good night or good luck. 

Things went that way sometimes. 

Clemente said he would transfer her himself, after Terminal City fell. When he pulled the car over to the side of the road and told her to get out, she thought he was going to kill her, but instead he let her go. He told her to run and not look back.

One of her specialties. 

She never went back to Seattle. There were other survivors, scattered now, and weakened, but she sometimes found ways to connect. It wasn’t the same, though.

It was like losing her brothers and sisters all over again. 

***

She was mawing on chicken wings and slopping them down with cheap beer at a truck stop bar when someone at her elbow said in disbelief, “Max?”

She glanced up at the tall, lanky man with floppy hair. “Yeah,” she said, and viciously yanked more meat off the bone. 

“It’s Sam, Sam Winchester,” he said, and she raised her eyebrows, because she’d never heard the name. “No,” he shook his head, “sorry, Harrison. Sam Harrison. Sammy.”

Max choked and he whapped her between the shoulders, because holy crap, suddenly she could see a skinny kid with floppy hair who used to ride on her bike, safely wedged between her and his brother.

“Sammy!” she said when she’d recovered, and reached up to put her arms around him, laughing. “Sammy, you got tall!”

“Yeah,” he said, and hugged her back. “Must have been all that nutritious mac and cheese.”

She pulled back and they studied each other, smiling widely. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “Wow.”

“I know!” Sammy – no, Sam – said. “I’m so glad you’re all right. We were never able to find out.”

Her heart squeezed at the ‘we,’ and she nodded, her voice hitching slightly. “So, Dean –?”

“Right here,” someone said at her elbow, and boy, speak of the devil. “Hey, Max.”

“Hi, Dean,” she said, and they stood there staring, not hugging, and then they seemed to feel silly at the same moment and went in for a friendly hug. 

She took her food back to their table and Dean ordered them shots and then she ordered them shots and then Sammy – for crying out loud, Sam – ordered them beer because, Dean said, she could clearly see that he’d grown up to be a pussy.

She knew about some people they’d never been able to find out about, and they knew about some others that she’d never been able to find out about, the awesomest of which was that Normal was some kind of grand guru in Malia Obama’s grassroots movement to restore voting rights. Dean said he kind of thought Normal just went around telling everyone to get back to work.

When Sammy – seriously, was she brain-damaged? SAM – went to the bathroom, Max and Dean just sat and stared across the table at each other, unable to keep the small talk up on their own.

“Yeah,” Dean said finally, and took a hearty swig of beer.

“Yep,” Max said, and followed suit.

“You ever find your dad?” she asked when she set down the beer.

Dean shook his head. “Never found out what happened to him,” he said, then asked, “Logan?”

“Dead,” Max said simply. 

Dean nodded, then held up his beer bottle in salute. Max clinked hers against it, and they drank.


End file.
